The Adobe-Salesforce.com arrangement "presents a client-server style for Internet development," with Flash as the client and Force.com as the server, he said.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how Microsoft reacts," to the arrangement, Knipp said. Unlike Salesforce.com and Adobe, Microsoft has both a cloud platform, with Windows Azure, and a rich Internet platform, Silverlight, under the same roof, said Knipp.

The Adobe-Salesforce.com tie-up makes sense from a developer-led business perspective, said analyst James Governor, of Redmonk.

"Salesforce.com is now 10 years old, so while it's a Web app, it's very much 1.0," Governor said. "In order to ensure its 2.0 story for Force.com, Salesforce wanted a solid rich internet application development experience -- Adobe is a natural partner."

Another analyst, Jeff Kaplan, managing director of Thinkstrategies, did not view the deal as an effort to jumpstart Force.com. "However, it is part of their joint effort to make enterprise applications easier to develop and use," Kaplan said.